ct
gratification to our _besoin_ of ideality, by embellishing our
scientific thoughts, without injury to their essential reality" (vi.
647). In consistency with all this, M. Comte warns thinkers against too
severe a scrutiny of the exact truth of scientific laws, and stamps with
"severe reprobation" those who break down "by too minute an
investigation" generalizations already made, without being able to
substitute others (vi. 639): as in the case of Lavoisier's general
theory of chemistry, which would have made that science more
satisfactory than at present to "the instinctive inclinations of our
intelligence" if it had turned out true, but unhappily it did not. These
mental dispositions in M. Comte account for his not having found or
sought a logical criterion of proof; but they are scarcely consistent
with his inveterate hostility to the hypothesis of the luminiferous
ether, which certainly gratifies our "predilection for order and
harmony," not to say our "besoin d'idealite", in no ordinary degree.
This notion of the "destination" of the study of natural laws is to our
minds a complete dereliction of the essential principles which form the
Positive conception of science; and contained the germ of the perversion
of his own philosophy which marked his later years. It might be
interesting, but scarcely worth while, to attempt to penetrate to the
just thought which misled M. Comte, for there is almost always a grain
of truth in the errors of an original and powerful mind. There is
another grave aberration in M. Comte's view of the method of positive
science, which though not more unphilosophical than the last mentioned,
is of greater practical importance. He rejects totally, as an invalid
process, psychological observation properly so called, or in other
words, internal consciousness, at least as regards our intellectual
operations. He gives no place in his series of the science of
Psychology, and always speaks of it with contempt. The study of mental
phaenomena, or, as he expresses it, of moral and intellectual functions,
has a place in his scheme, under the head of Biology, but only as a
branch of physiology. Our knowledge of the human mind must, he thinks,
be acquired by observing other people. How we are to observe other
people's mental operations, or how interpret the signs of them without
having learnt what the signs mean by knowledge of ourselves, he does not
state. But it is clear to him that we can learn very lit